FOAM LAKE BIRDING
No. 82
I am back. Nothing newsworthy in that, but there are two things from Texas that I do want to mention. Recently, we took some friends from Foam Lake on a nature hike in Llano Grande nature preserve and the main item on the list was to see an alligator or two that live there. We did see one huge one sunning himself, but my first highlight was seeing four Roseate Spoonbills feeding in the shallows. These rosy, goose-sized waders with their spoon shaped bills were quite spectacular, at least to me. I wanted to show our friends the Paraque that I wrote about in Article No. 76. This same bird had been roosting there for the past several years and was a sure thing. My second highlight, sadly, was seeing only a pile of Paraque feathers where the bird normally roosted. It seems that it became lunch for some predator. I hope it got a stomach ache.
Since coming back, I have enjoyed seeing our northern birds. Because of the unusually warm weather, some summer birds such as Robins, Flickers and Grackles are back early. When the weather recently took a turn for the worse, all three of these birds were in our backyard eating last year’s chokecherries that were still hanging on the trees. The seed eaters such as Juncos, Purple Finches and Siskins are making good use of our feeders. In the last few days Goldfinches and White Throated Sparrows have arrived. There will be more to come.
For this week I want to cover a bird that only occasionally can be found in a backyard, but one that just about everybody knows – the Killdeer. The Killdeer is a Robin-sized wading bird that spends a lot of time far from water. Its physical characteristics are such that one can easily identify the bird by sight alone and without binoculars. A wader with a brown head, back and tail and a white neck, breast and belly topped off with two very distinct black throat stripes or bands is the Killdeer. More often than not the Killdeer can be identified by its call before it is seen. Its clear and far carrying call of “killdeer” is distinctive. It can literally be heard any time of day or night and I have often heard it calling at night as it is flying overhead. Why it flies at night is hard to say. The males and females are the same.
It is even a more interesting bird once it starts nesting. It nests quite some distance from water and often in newly tilled fields or gardens. Being rather confiding it will even nest in towns. When I was on the farm, it was an annual spring ritual, during seeding, to keep moving Killdeers’ nests in order to avoid destroying them with machinery. The Killdeer always accepted the eggs in a new location in a man made nest. Whenever danger comes close, the female runs off the nest and pretends to have a broken wing thus leading the predator away. At this time the orange tail is clearly visible. Once the predator has been successfully led a safe distance away, the Killdeer makes a miraculous recovery and flies away leaving a confused predator behind. The young are precocial (they can run around and feed themselves shortly after hatching) and look just like their parents except with only one throat band. As kids, we used to monitor Killdeers’ nests and play with the newly hatched young before they left for the nearest slough. They certainly are cute and cuddly.
The Killdeer belongs to a world wide family of wading birds called plover of which five can be found in Saskatchewan. Two of them, the Killdeer and the rare Piping Plover, nest here; three of them, Black Bellied, Golden and Semipalmated are transients and best seen in the spring.
Even though Killdeer are common here the first picture was taken at Llano Grande nature preserve in Texas in February. The other three photos were taken of a nesting Killdeer in our neighbour's yard across the street. She certainly put on a show with her broken wing routine.
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